Sowing and reaping

John 4:35-38 (AMP)
35 Do you not say, ‘It is still four months until the harvest comes?’ Look, I say to you, raise your eyes and look at the fields and see, they are white for harvest. 36 Already the reaper is receiving his wages and he is gathering fruit for eternal life; so that he who plants and he who reaps may rejoice together.
If you have even had the opportunity to live in a farming community then you know that farmers have a deep understanding of the seasons and they take them seriously. They understand when the season for planting is here and they work hard from early morning before sunrise to get the sowing done because they understand that they have a window of opportunity to sow and then the season changes. Depending on what they have sowed, they know how many months it will take before it is time to harvest.
One important aspect that the scripture above brings across is that we have a gap between the season of sowing and the season for reaping. We act in faith and release when we sow our seed and then we wait for God to bring about the increase because only He can do it. That time in between is a time to be patient and to wait in faith. Many times we get impatient especially in this generation where we are used to instant things. We want to sow today in the morning and reap in the afternoon.
Some crops take a few months while others take years before you can reap. Have you ever heard the story of the Chinese bamboo?
Once you plant the seed, you water it and nature it every days and after one year, nothing sprouts for the ground. You continue with the same routine of watering and nurturing for the seed but after 2 years still nothing sprouts from the ground. The same routing happens in the third year and still nothing sprouts, it would be easy to give up and assume that the seeds died and nothing will come out of the ground. The fourth year it is the same thing but the farmer diligently waters what he cannot see. Something amazing happens in the 5th years because something tiny finally sprouts from the ground and in just 6 weeks it grows 90 feet tall.
A great lesson on patience and faith and that we sow in one season and we keep being diligent even when we cannot see results because the harvest will soon come min its time.